


A Turk and his SOLDIER

by kitsune13tamlin



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: AU, Cloti - Freeform, F/M, but its an idea I wanted to share, once upon a time in Midgar, story idea that will remain just an idea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23840212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsune13tamlin/pseuds/kitsune13tamlin
Summary: an AU.  Cloud still leaves home for Midgar - but he doesn't leave home alone this time.  And the reasons, and results, are very very different.  Two chapters of an idea that never got a full fic of its own.  But those two chapters hold enough, I think, to tell the story.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

I woke up in the dark.

Of course, dark is a relative term when you've got mako-enhanced eyes. To me, nothing was ever completely dark. Even with my eyes closed I still saw green. Now, looking around me, I saw things in shades of gray and decided not to find the metaphor for my life in that.

I was in a small room with a packed earth floor and someone had been nice enough to think to put a thin mattress of sorts under me so I wasn't in the dirt. There was even a blanket over me even though, again, the mako that ran through my blood kept me warm. I was alone and my hearing picked up nothing.

With a grunt, I rolled to my feet. Since I was alone I didn't have to stilt my movements or slow them down to keep from scaring other people. My lungs hurt a little. Whatever they'd used on me had been strong, strong enough to knock out an ex-SOLDIER First Class and that was saying something.

It was saying they'd known what they were dealing with.

I left the blanket on the mattress and took the three steps that brought me to the door. Not expecting anything I tried the lift latch. A part of me felt stupid for even doing that but a larger part of me knew I'd feel more stupid if I never tried it and, for some unexplained reason, it was unlocked and I'd just sat there in my cell the entire time.

It was unlocked.

I felt my eyebrows jerk upward in puzzlement and my hand automatically went behind me to feel for the comforting grip of my weapon. It wasn't there of course. I'd already known that because I hadn't felt its weight but still…

Curious and cautious, I pushed the door open. Mako polluted as I was, there wasn't a lot I was afraid of. Physically. Emotionally – that was a different story but it was my story and I don't share that one.

The door swung open silently and I took the automatic step that would take me out of the little room to find myself in a slightly larger room. It had an earth floor too and the walls were cheap wood substitute. There was a large table in the middle of the room, maps of Midgar on the walls, a small ice chest… bedrolls neatly made and stacked to the side. I walked over to one of the bedrolls and knelt to strip off the cord that bound it shut, slipping it up my single sleeve. Safety precaution. Fists were nice. Having a garrote up your sleeve was nice too. While I was kneeling, I scraped my finger over the floor and lifted the residue to my nose. My glove was such a familiar smell that I could automatically sort it away from the other scents. I smelled feet and sweat. Maybe a little blood. Beer? And something else I couldn't explain. Something that smelled… green. Except I knew the smell of Midgar's dead soil and there was nothing green in it. It did tell me what the heavy silence had already though. I was underground somewhere. Flicking my fingers together I stood up and moved around the room. Looking for the way out.

If they were nice enough to leave my door unlocked, maybe they'd be nice enough to leave the way out the same way. There wasn't another door to the room though. I got myself a bottle of water out of the ice chest and shook my hair back from my forehead before I drank it. That helped and I narrowed my eyes and looked around the room again.

There was a spot in the corner that was scuffed and I walked over and looked up. Above me was a wooden ceiling. Someone must have double layered it because I couldn't see any light coming through the boards on most of it and it was still quiet where I was. Just overhead though there was the smallest difference of light and I could make out a trap door of sorts. Careful study showed me no way up to it but I was better than that.

The walls were cheap and my knuckles went through them easily.

I controlled my blows, something I'd learned to do when I was dealing with 'normal' people, and soon I was slowly working my way up the wall in that corner, using the holes in the plywood for toe and finger holes. I was making noise but not too much and if anyone was above me they were quieter than most people knew how to be even sitting still. It got me to the trap door and I reached out carefully and felt along its edges as far as my arms could reach.

It would have been nice to be a little bit taller, even though I knew I had long arms and legs for someone my height.

I found the hinges on the trapdoor though. Inside. So the door dropped downward. I had no idea about architecture so I didn't know if that made it more stable or less so for people standing on it. There was no latch on my side. Because no one was there to see I let myself frown as I hung there and puzzled over it. The wall I was hanging on like some freakish black spider wasn't the most stable and it took that moment to remind me by swaying under my weight slightly. I stayed still until it was done, gloved hand carefully braced against the ceiling.

I could try punching upward through the door and hope that I could either do it in one blow or that no one was nearby close enough to stop me before I got enough blows to shatter it. They'd used something SOLDIER strong to knock me out origonally though and it made me cautious in dealing with the unknown. I didn't want to give up my element of surprise. Bracing myself as well as I could I raised my other glove to my mouth and got the cufflink that kept it shut off. It had my personal symbol on it, a joke that had become something more, that had become a reminder of better times and what I was now. I had the same emblem on my shoulder guard as well and my ears. It was actually what some people called me these days. What was a name after all, but what people chose to call you?

I used the cufflink and went to work on the screws that held the hinges in place. It was awkward and the wall kept threatening to drop me or buckle but I was good at being patient. What else was I going to be doing anyway? Buffing my boots?

I left the screws enough in place that the side I'd worked free wouldn't sag too noticeably and went to work on the other hindge. It left my brain with too much quiet time to think and I tried to keep it from wandering backward into the past by focusing on what I'd do when I had the trap door open. Since that was basically 'rip it down, climb out, and deal with whoever was in the room above', it didn't exactly take up genius levels of brainpower but it was distraction enough that I got the second hinge loose enough for my fingers. I snapped the cufflink back in place and then braced a shoulder while I wiggled my fingers to work the cramps from the close work out of them.

Why couldn't I have been born tall?

Of course, a tall person would have had a harder time working in the small space I'd squeezed myself into but the extra arm reach would have been nice. Well, as mom used to say –

If wishes were chocobos, we'd all ride.

Which was a silly thing to say. I knew it was meant to be clever but if wishes really were chocobos we wouldn't ride. We'd be in feathers and chocobo dung up to our as-

The floor above me creaked and I decided it was time to stop stalling and just get on with things. If anyone tried to open the trap from above, my tampering would be obvious. If they stood on it –

I reached up and got my fingers under the hinges even though it hurt and I was probably ruining another pair of gloves. Taking a breath and bracing myself as well as I could because I was going to be pulling the trap door toward me and that was just going to make things awkward, I exhaled and concentrated as I yanked.

It wasn't my strongest pull. I wasn't set up for using my full muscle strength in the position I was in. It was enough though and the trap door came down with a horrible crashing noise that hurt my ears. I wrenched it down and to the side again so that where it was bolted broke as well. I hear yells above me but they were at a slight distance and so I let the door go and caught the splinted lip of the hole in the roof/floor with my hands and bodily hoisted myself out. I registered the body barreling down on me even as I did and so I braced my arms over the hole and kicked up and out with my legs, letting them unfold as they cleared the opening. The thick soles of my boots caught him in the knees and he went down and backward. I kept the momentum and flipped myself backward and onto solid ground.

Somewhere, far away in the back of my head, something was laughing at me. I was still automatically making my movements slower than they could be just so I wouldn't scare the 'normals'. 'Normals' that had tried to lock me up in a hole in the ground and used SOLDIER strength drugs on me to knock me out.

In my peripheral I noticed I was in a larger room now and that it was crowded with furniture at one end. It had a high ceiling. There was a window behind me made of stained glass. A part of me, the stupid part, wanted to avoid breaking that window if I could help it. It was pretty and the world didn't have a lot of pretty things left in it…

My training kicked in then and that was where the difference between a Shinra grunt and one of its First Class SOLDIERs showed. Logically, I was in a strange situation and surrounded by people I hadn't had time to scope out. I should go out that window and make my escape to report what was happening to my superiors. Problem with that was that SOLDIERs weren't trained to run and I had no superior to report to anyway. That, and the day a bunch of 'normals' became a problem for me was the day I needed to retire.

Except of course I'd been 'retired' years ago…

I was in my travel gear but the duster that covered one of my legs and protected it when I rode was no hindrance and my pants were loose fitting enough that they didn't restrict my movements either. I blocked the next two blows from different men with my forearms and then lashed out with my legs, dropping low and sweeping their ankles out from under them. I was back up on my feet in an entirely different section of the room before they hit the floor and delivering my own blows to new strangers, fists working methodically.

There was something wrong with me. I had always enjoyed fighting.

I had no intention of running of course. I intended to beat everyone in the room into submission and then get some answers. Answers to questions like why they'd thought kidnapping me was a smart move in the first place.

I drove an elbow into someone's jaw and since it was the arm that was sleeveless, his teeth broke my skin there. I noticed it but didn't feel the pain. That would come later. I just hoped he hadn't gotten any of my blood in his mouth. Mako-tainted blood could do nasty things to an unprepared body if they got too much of it in them.

For a minute my rhythm faltered as the vision of someone I'd loved – someone I thought I might have loved, or at least would have if I'd been given the chance, lying in a pool of blood that was mine and theirs in a broken mako reactor somewhere that was miles from Midgar and years ago flashed in front of my eyes.

That was the problem with mako. It messed with your head. I knew I'd been unconscious by the time that had happened. It didn't stop me from being able to see the way their hair had been soaked with our blood or the way it had discolored their pale skin.

The blow to the back of my head caught me off guard and I fell forward and let the momentum keep carrying me right back to my feet. Then I heard one of the men shout something and I heard the relief in his voice. Without even needing to think, my head swung around and I focused on the newest arrival to the fight. It made me blink again because it was a Shinra grunt in full gear, right down to the helmet and, in my mind, still recovering from being pushed years backward, I was glad to see him for a minute too. Just because, in the past, Shinra guards had been a comforting thing. Even before he charged toward me however I was already shaking that off. Shinra, and my life there, was years in the past. My life now was drastically different and I clenched my fists to feel the rub of my leather gloves and hear their creak.

He met me in the middle of the room and I swerved to the side and drove my open palm upward to catch him in the chest and sent him flying backward. Except –

My palm didn't make contact. He was jumping backward and then swinging back in again and I barely got my forearm in the way, black fabric of my sleeve swinging. It made my eyes go just a little bigger and I closed with him quickly. We were about the same size and I should have had no problem with him except –

Except –

Except he was moving too fast. And when his fists did find me, there was too much power behind them. I adjusted but not as fast as my mind told me I should have. I was fighting 'normals'. The man in front of me…

Wasn't.

It made no sense and even as my body remembered how to fight someone else like me and adjusted, my mind scrambled. No one – **no one** – was supposed to have survived except for me. I was the last SOLDIER First Class. All the others were dead. The program had been considered a failure and funds had been diverted to machine based soldiers and weapons. I'd accepted that I was the last, the only one of my messed up, psychologically unbalanced, mako enhanced kind left.

So why was the Shinra grunt I was fighting moving like a SOLDIER, and more, a SOLDIER First Class from the moves he knew? My mind, so busy thinking, wasn't concentrating the way I should have been and I took a blow to the chest that sent me flying backward into what I'd discovered were church pews. I braced my arms and back flipped to clear where I'd fallen and the soldier's blow just missed where he'd gone in for the kill there. It made my eyes narrow and I closed with him again. I knew each of the SOLDIERs First Class personally and this man wasn't any of them. I'd figure out who and what he was later. After I'd knocked him unconscious.

The fight that followed was brutal and yet it woke up something inside me that had been sleeping for years. To prove how broken I was inside, I'd always found a certain beauty in fighting and there was something impossibly graceful and intimate about the way SOLDIER First Class fought when they were fighting each other and not holding back. There was a strange, for lack of a better word, _trust_ involved in it because you were the only things that could really hurt each other and, even when you were trying your hardest to do just exactly that, there was a strange equal measure of understanding. It was the only time you were allowed to really be exactly what you'd been made into. It was impossible to explain but, it was almost a strange relief to be fighting someone that was –

Like me.

I finally saw my opening and caught the guard's wrist. I bent low and spun, dragging him off balance. He swept his foot out at the last minute and knocked me off my feet as well. We fell in a pile but I'd been expecting it and he hadn't and so I was on top when we landed. I reached down and ripped off his helmet to deliver the blow that would put him down –

And I saw the hair color. No, I saw the hair itself.

My movements stuttered to an abrupt stop and in that moment the pretend guard moved their leg and caught me in the ribs, knocking us both over. This time they ended up on top and I could only stare dumbly up at -

At a face I'd last seen while I lay in my own blood because a silver haired man had opened me up from collarbone to rib cage and left me to bleed out on the concrete floor in the dark. A face that had brought me comfort long before that fateful moment and, thinking I was dying at the time, it was a face I'd been glad would be the last one I'd see.

Now, years later and not dying, I lay on my back and looked up at the face from all that time ago – at the person I'd been told was dead by the Turks when they'd rescued me. Hesitant, I raised my hand and they didn't bat it away or stop me as I touched their cheek, very lightly, still not sure they were real. They did smile at me though when I touched them and it was the same soft, quiet smile I remembered. My throat was tight and I could barely get their name out.

"Cloud?"

His eyes, which had once been endlessly blue, now had a mako-green tint in their center and they softened when I said his name. His voice was just as low and soft as I remembered.

"Hey, Tifa."


	2. Chapter 2

He looked down at the object in his fingers and turned it, blue eyes narrowed.

Pretty soon the rest of his crew would arrive. There would be sound and motion and the usual last minute rushes to make sure everything was in order. They'd get updates over their phones, voices in the ear mikes, more people rushing around outside to clear the way for their exit…

But now, right now, in this moment, he was the only one there. The cockpit was silent, it's electronics still turned off, and the only sound he could hear passed the open door in the back was the rush of wind over rooftops and somewhere far away, muted voices drilling and ocean waves. If he inhaled, he could at least pretend he could smell salt water passed the oil and metal.

He bet she could.

The thought made him smile, just barely, to himself and he looked back down at the small sliver of silver in his leather covered hand.

How long had they been together?

First in childhood, growing up in Nibelheim. Those weren't memories he enjoyed looking back on and they hadn't been a part of each other's lives then. Or, she'd been part of his, always, always, the same way the sunshine or the mountain air had. He just hadn't been sure she'd known he existed as anything more than a town fixture. Especially after he'd let her fall…

He shook his head and closed his hand over the silver.

He'd made that up to her. He had. Even if she didn't seem to think it needed to be made up for or even understand – he'd fixed that. Or – there was no fixing the past – but at least he'd changed the way it had tried to set his – their – future.

At least, he was trying to.

He'd gone with her though. Snuck away from home to follow her onto the Shin-Ra bus. His mother had since forgiven him but all he'd known at the time was that, the night before when she'd confessed she was joining the corporation's program in a whisper on top of the well… her eyes had looked so large and lost and scared. And he'd know – right then – that he'd never let her go alone. Deep in his heart that night, he'd made her a promise.

To always be there for her. To always come when she needed him.

So he'd slipped onto the bus with the rest of the boys going to be regulation grunts and from the back he'd watched her with her brave smile and her cheerful goodbyes as she got on last.

He'd watched her all the way to Midgar.

When he wasn't busy puking his guts up.

The thought made him smirk and he reached out with his other hand to caress the stick of the helicopter. He hated traveling in enclosed spaces. The motion, the lack of fresh air, it made him sick to his stomach. But when he was the one piloting the beast… oh, that – that was a world of difference.

That was freedom. And he found that his soul craved that above almost everything.

Almost.

His thumb rubbed over the metal circle resting trustingly in his palm.

She'd joined the women's division, he'd joined the men's when they'd reached the City in the Sky. He hadn't gotten to see her much, not at first. He'd spent more time worrying about her than he had about himself and it had showed in his original scores. Even if the SOLDIER program accepted men, which it didn't, he knew he never would have made it. But she had.

It was why she had come to Midgar in the first place and he'd never once doubted her ability to become anything she wanted to. Hearing she had passed the first of the rigorous tests on the way to SOLDIER had made him more proud than if he'd done it himself – and it had also panicked him

Because he'd suddenly realized that she was going to be going out – out there – into the rest of the world and that the rest of the world was dangerous. He couldn't protect her, couldn't be there for her, as a Shin-Ra nobody grunt.

So he'd joined the Turks.

It hadn't been his first thought but he'd formed a friendship with one of them on a botched mission where FUBAR had applied to every aspect. They'd gotten along and Zack had complimented him on his ability to think on his feet. Zack was already a Turk at the time and just a few ranks away from achieving top recognition. Top recognition which, he'd cheerfully informed Cloud, would allow him to be permanently partnered with a SOLDIER, the eyes and ears and darker skills to her strength and reputation.

Zack was excited because it meant he was going to end up with some 'hot chick' and do 'real Turk work'. Cloud had heard the revelation as if it were a divine message to his previous failures, a light leading him forward through the darkness.

He'd done what it had taken, including cheating and calling in Zack's help, and he'd applied to join the Turks.

Later he found out that cheating and knowing the 'right people' was considered standard Turk operating procedure and had helped get him, as bumbling as those first attempts had been, short listed into the program. All he'd known for sure at the time was that when you were fighting, you fought in whatever way you needed to in order to make sure you won – and that he wasn't going to fail Tifa again. If being a Turk was what it took to stand by her side, than he'd be a Turk.

And all the darkness that came with it.

He looked back down at the ring in his palm and his eyes were dark and a little lost. The corporation and the Turks in particular were very, very good about having moral grounds for what they did. For glossing over things and keeping you from looking too closely at them. Your morals developed calluses fast. But… he still…

He still thought for himself. Despite the training and the indoctrination – and the simple fiercely loyal Turk camaraderie that made you want, very badly, not to. And – he was starting to get uncomfortable with the way he saw things heading deep inside the corporation.

Oh, he wasn't naïve. Not anymore. He knew that the corporation had never been blameless or clean. But… lately…

Maybe it was that he paid attention. He actually looked when he was involved in something. Tseng said it was one of the traits that made him so invaluable to the Turks. His ability to do something as simple as pay attention to details. He'd always paid attention to details. And the details he was seeing, in his head the way they were starting to fit together…

He frowned and closed his hand around the ring.

He wasn't sure he liked it and he hoped he was wrong and – and even if he wasn't how could he ever leave –

"Tifa." In his solitude, he could whisper her name and let the soft smile it brought to his lips out.

Recently promoted to SOLDIER 1st. His SOLDIER 1st. His partner, his responsibility, his shield mate. SOLDIER were always female – the mako had reacted badly with male testosterone in high levels and caused insanity. The first batch of male SOLDIER experiments had needed to be put down and that had been before Cloud's time at Shin-Ra. Since then, Shin-Ra had been on the lookout for female recruits. Tifa had scandalized the entire town when she'd volunteered but he'd understood. He'd wanted to be something more than a grocery store worker or a local innkeeper too. And – and that night at the well, she'd confessed that, if she was strong enough, maybe she could protect people like her mother from monsters that killed them and left their bodies strewn across flower filled meadows.

He understood that.

Needing to be strong enough to protect someone you loved…

He was. He had. In the year they'd been together, he'd saved her. Been able to be there for her.

Most of the time.

She called him her friend. Her partner. When she was exhausted, it was his shoulder she let her head drop onto. When she was happy, he was the one she turned her eyes to first. When she was upset… when she was upset, he was the only one she wanted to be around.

He paid attention to detail. He'd noticed.

It filled up the lonely place inside him that even the Turks, even Zack, couldn't fill. It made him look forward to missions when he could see her again, and downtime when she would be around to 'accidentally' run into. He was important to her. Even… he liked to pretend maybe he was even special out of all the SOLDIER and Turks that loved her. Opening his hand, he stared at the ring with its wolf head.

That was his symbol. Fenrir. Reno had said he was as clever as a wolf once and it had stuck.

Cloud didn't mind.

Tifa had liked it…

She'd even blushed prettily when Zack had laughed and called Cloud ' _her_ wolf'.

Cloud didn't mind that either.

Turks already felt possessive about their specific SOLDIER. HQ knew better than to try to assign pairs that weren't already bonded. The one time they'd tried with Cloud, his 'replacement' had been found unconscious, shaved bald and tapped up in the broom closet and Cloud had already been on the outbound ship toward Wutai, hacking up half a lung from his flu and the other half from his motion sickness. He'd made it though and they hadn't tried a stunt like that since.

He'd heard that Genesis had done worse when they'd tried to sideline him thanks to a fractured ankle. Cissnei was still scolding him over that one.

It made Cloud smile to himself a little and then he exhaled as he lifted the ring.

Would Tifa wear it – if he gave it to her? Would she want to?

He made a noise and buried his face in his gloved hands, careful not to dislodge the ring.

Was he even going to have the nerve to offer it?

Probably not. He'd already had it for months now. She'd even spotted it once, travel arrangements often made for close quarters. He'd stammered out something absolutely idiotic and stuffed it hastily back in his suit pocket.

He might be a Turk but he was still such a loser. It was too bad the glasses and gloves didn't come with automatic suaveness.

Was 'suaveness' even a word?

Genesis would say it was.

Raising his eyes to peer over the safety of his hands, Cloud blinked at the windshield of the helicopter. He just –

He had a bad feeling about this mission.

A really, really bad feeling.

They'd been in tough situations and dangerous situations before. He'd had bad feelings about missions almost every time they went out. But this one…

This one was different.

This one was in home territory.

Nibelhiem.

A part of him had never wanted to see that town again and he knew that wasn't fair to his mother. He didn't have many good memories of the place and he already knew being a Turk wasn't going to change anyone's opinion of him there. He missed the mountains, the way the air tasted, the snows and the meadows full of grass and the stars that went on forever – but he didn't miss the town.

The best part of Nibelheim was already with him.

But the reactor there had been malfunctioning somehow and he and Tifa had been near Fort Condor, so the corporation had sent another team. Zack and his SOLDIER. The dark haired Turk had even called him on the PHS just to brag that he and Aerith were going to go see exactly what it was in Nibelheim that stunted growth spurts.

That had been a week ago.

With no contact since then and no contact with Nibelheim either.

SOLDIER and Turks sometimes dropped off the grid – but not for something as routine as a reactor check. Something was wrong and everyone knew it.

Which was why Cloud was sitting in the helicopter in Junon, waiting for his partner, his SOLDIER, his Tifa, to round up the rest of their party so they could leave. He'd seen the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes when she'd found out where they were going and he understood. She wasn't the village sweetheart that had left so many years ago. Perhaps neither of them really wanted to return.

But Zack and Aerith were there and they were in trouble badly enough that it had keep them from even contacting HQ. Whether they wanted to or not, whether he had a stomach clenching bad feeling or not – it was time for them both to go home.

From the corner of his eye, he caught movement and turned his head enough to spot his partner effortlessly leaping up onto the higher platform and trotting toward him. She saw his attention and waved with a smile that never failed to make him feel like the most important person in the world.

His hand clenched around the ring.

Should he - ?

Could he - ?

Later. With something close to panic he shoved the ring roughly back in his pocket and started the preflight prep. He'd give it to her later. Maybe after Nibelheim. After they'd laid the last of their ghosts to rest.

Yeah.

Yeah, he'd give it to her then.

It could wait.

Just for a little while longer… it could wait.


End file.
